Free It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton

understood. But it is clear that by the time most children begin preschool, the architecture of the brain has essentially been constructed. From that time until adolescence, the brain remains a relatively eager learner with occasional “growth spurts,” but it will never again attain the incredible pace of learning that occurs in the first few years.
    Nevertheless, as long as our brain stays healthy, we will have plenty of synapses left for learning. Even late in life, and even after a long diet of mental “junk food,” the brain retains the capacity to respond to good nourishment and proper stimulation. But neurologically speaking, playing catch-up is vastly more difficult and costly, in terms of personal sacrifice and social resources, than getting children’s brains off to a good start in the first place.
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    T HE PICTURE of the brain as a developing organ that has begun to emerge from biological research dovetails with some key findings from the world of psychology. Nowhere is this more welcome than in the study of what constitutes intelligence, an area of inquiry that has been clouded by controversy, misinformation, and misinterpretation.
    It has become fashionable in some quarters to assert that intelligence is fixed at birth, part of our genetic makeup that is invulnerable to change, a claim promoted by Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein in their 1994 book, The Bell Curve. This view is politically convenient: if nothing can alter intellectual potential, nothing need be offered to those who begin life with fewer resources or in less favorable environments. But research provides us with plenty of evidence that this perspective is not only unscientific but insidious. It is increasingly apparent that the nature-nurture question is not an “either/or” debate so much as a “both/and” proposition.
    Dr. Frederick Goodwin, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, cites studies in which children who could be described as being “at risk” for developmental problems were exposed at an early age to stimulating environments. The result: The children’s IQ scores increased by as much as 20 points. A similar study, best known as the Abecedarian Project, examined this same process in a long and intensive research effort begun under the leadership of psychologist and educator Craig Ramey at the University of North Carolina in the early 1970s.
    Ramey gathered together a group of more than a hundred newborns, most of them African-Americans. Their parents, most of whom had not graduated from high school, had an average IQ of 85. The majority of the families were living on welfare.
    At the age of four months, half of the children were placed in a preschool with a very high ratio of adult staff to children. But it wasn’t only the attention these children were given that was special. When adults spoke to them, they used words that were descriptive and that were suited to the child’s stage of learning. They were doing precisely what responsive parents do when they communicate with their young sons and daughters.
    The children in this group were given good nutrition, educational toys, and plenty of other stimulation, as well as the encouragement to explore their surroundings. A “home-school resource teacher” met with each family every other week to coach the parents on how to help their children with school-related lessons and activities.
    By the time the children were three years old, those in the experimental group of children averaged 17 points higher on IQ tests than the other half of the original group, 101 versus 84. Even more significant than these impressive gains is their durability: the differences in IQ persisted a decade later, when the children were attending a variety of other schools. Dr. Ramey is continuing to follow the children to see what their further development brings.
    Bear this research in mind when you listen to those